Alma saw through her—that wasn’t the camp leader’s main reason. She merely wished to hear Alma play for her own pleasure. The roles had finally reversed for the peasant girl from Upper Austria, who used to stand in the cheapest standing place in the Vienna Philharmonic and for the violin virtuoso, who had played on stage in her elegant silk gown. Now, the former peasant girl could have the virtuoso all for herself, and Alma understood it all too well.
“Would Lagerführerin mind my playing Monti’s ‘Czardas’?” asked Alma.
For an instant, Mandl froze under her SS wardens’ inquisitive gazes.
Alma barely restrained herself from grinning openly. Her thoroughly veiled jab had hit its aim with a wonderful precision: the self-proclaimed sophisticated lover of everything refined had not the faintest idea who Monti was and what that cursed ‘Czardas’ of his sounded like.
Though, Mandl recovered her poise quickly enough—Alma had to give the camp leader that. “Oh, I don’t care one way or the other. Whatever you wish to play is fine.”
Alma patiently waited for Mandl and her SS wardens to settle in the front row, tucked the violin under her chin and stroked the strings with her bow, plunging the entire block into depths of the folkloric piece which her father had made her practice when she was still a young girl, for hours on end, in some long-forgotten life of hers. Professor Rosé—her beloved Vati, ever the perfectionist, made her play it again and again until she had learned it by heart and could play it with her eyes closed and without any sheet music, much like she did now, to the SS women’s astonishment.
She obliterated them with that short and rather uncomplicated piece, just like she had obliterated the entire audience and music critics in the Vienna Philharmonic, rendering them all speechless and forcing them to drop at last their condescending tone whenever they wrote about her playing. Very good technique, but still much too stilted. Much too masculine; she doesn’t let herself be passionate with the instrument as she ought to… She had already made those self-important ravens in their tailcoats explode in the applause; making these SS women do the same was a child’s game. Here they were, clapping their hands off like children, looking at her with outright wonder—however did they manage to catch such a rare butterfly in their ghastly collection?
Regarding them closely and with a carefully concealed contempt, Alma wondered the same. Bowing to her gray-clad audience—but not too deeply—she inquired if they desired to hear anything else.
“Prepare something for tonight together with an orchestra, if you can,” Mandl asked, getting up to leave. “We’ll invite a few SS officers.”
As soon as the door closed after them, Alma found herself one on one with her new charges. There were about twenty of them, not counting the former conductor and two girls—Hilde and Karla—whom Alma already knew. All appeared to study Alma closely, impressed but visibly on their guard. After a quick inspection, Alma concluded that at least one of them, that very Spitzer from the Schreibstube, belonged to the so-called camp elite. As soon as the rumors about Alma’s transfer to Birkenau had begun to swell, Magda Hellinger had instructed her personally how to recognize such details—if she wished to survive it, that is.
The shorter the number on the prisoner’s breast, the more important their status. Short numbers were the early prisoners, the so-called camp VIPs. It was them who were made into the very first Kapos—inmate functionaries—and block elders. Most of the administrative positions in the camp belonged to their caste. Easily recognizable among the camp’s population, they strutted about in civilian suits and spit-shined boots, not unlike the ones worn only by their bosses in the SS. They wore their hair neatly parted to one side and checked their wristwatches lazily as they smoked imported cigarettes while supervising their underlings. Much like the SS, they had the right to take or save lives—a heavy baton hung attached to their hip as a sinister reminder of such power granted by their uniformed superiors.
“Everyone’s corrupted in the camp, to a bigger or lesser degree.” Magda had taught her the local ways just a few days ago. “It’s important to know whom to bribe. The SS will take anything—gold, foreign currency, jewelry—but procuring that very stuff is something only Kanada inmates can do. Have you seen their women? Hair done up like for some French fashion show, nail polish, perfume, earrings—Teufel,” she cursed—hell, “some of them fare better here than they did at home! So what that they have the crematorium working ceaselessly? Their fellow inmates are herded inside the facility to be gassed and burned and the Kanada night shift sunbathes and sings songs just behind the very wall that separates them from the gas chambers.”
Magda shook her head in apparent disbelief, before continuing.
“And Kanada men, those are veritable stock-market traders! When I went there to procure sheets and towels for our block on Dr. Wirths’ orders, I couldn’t believe my eyes at first. Every few minutes, a new transaction was being made. One has silk stockings, just pulled out of some poor soul’s suitcase that has most likely been gassed by then, and he offers them to a Kanada girl for ten dollars. The Kanada girl pulls the money out of her bra—they have underwear there, and what underwear, let me tell you!—and gives it to him like it’s nothing. It’s a good deal for her, considering, for she will sell it later to an SS warden for thirty and will have twenty for herself. Then another trader appears; he has French lavender soap, still unopened—a treasure! Someone trades a bottle of Hennessy they had just discovered for it. And so it goes between them the entire day as they sort through all those riches, and as long as they hand over part of their haul to the SS on duty—now, the SS only take foreign currency or jewelry because it’s easier to hide from their own superiors—it’s all safe for them to do so.”
Her gaze riveted to the Hungarian block elder, Alma had listened intently, taking it all in, purposely silent in order not to interrupt Magda with questions just yet. Such information could turn out to be life-saving in her nearest future. She could always ask for specifics later; now, it was a matter of paramount importance to acquire as many facts as possible, to memorize them the best she could, to sort them into suitable compartments—the SS, the prisoner hierarchy, the price of an inmate’s life in American dollars or dental gold.
“The markings on the inmate’s breast are just as important as the numbers,” Magda had continued. “In men’s camp, Green Triangles—criminals—constitute half of the Kapos. Red Triangles—political prisoners—constitute another half. Most of the Reds there are Poles, while the Green ones are mostly Germans, so the Greens are considered higher than the Poles just due to their Aryan status. But the Reds are better organized and so the Greens have to be careful around them if they know what’s good for them.”
Alma’s head had begun to ache. A hungry stomach didn’t inspire such mental gymnastics, yet Alma had forced herself to stay focused on the nurse’s words.
“With women, it’s pretty much the same, but there in Birkenau, asocial prisoners—Black Triangles—mostly function as Kapos. They are mostly German prostitutes. Then go Greens, but, naturally, there are few of those. Then Reds and only after them—us, Jews, the Yellow Stars. A rather amusing arrangement, if you think of it—murderers and prostitutes having the unrestrained authority over former professors, doctors, journalists, and artists—but this is Auschwitz-Birkenau for you. Blood is everything. But the connections are still more important than blood.”
Now, as she stood before these women, more than half of them Reds, Alma couldn’t be more grateful for Magda’s instructions. The Reds must have been Polish. Presently, they began to exchange hushed remarks in their language that gradually grew louder in volume. Their lips moved, but their eyes remained on Alma, a mixture of suspicion and hostility in them, and were hard and unblinking.
Emboldened by the fact that their new head of the orchestra appeared to be in no rush to establish any sort of authority over them, one of the girls pointed at Alma’s yellow star and made what sounded like a complaint to their former K
apo. Alma didn’t have to understand their language to understand the meaning: why was the Jew appointed as their leader? The situation was familiar by now; she had encountered such attitudes all over Hitler’s Europe and had grown perfectly immune to it. What disappointed her was a flash of resentment in her fellow inmates’ eyes. Poles or not, surely they should have learned by now that they were all in this together? The SS were the enemy, not her.
Alma shifted her glance toward the Jewish girls. Contrary to the Polish ones, they remained silent and subdued, casting their eyes about without meeting hers, looking guilty for no particular reason.
Only Spitzer from the Schreibstube, the representative of the camp elite, regarded Alma with an unreadable expression on her face. Fine-boned and wiry, she possessed two gems of black liquid eyes and a habit of narrowing them now and then, which gave her a cunning expression. Whether it was curiosity or the attempt to size her up, Alma decided to ignore Spitzer for now and instead offered her hand, palm up, to the former Kapo.
“My name is Alma Rosé. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance. Please, accept my sincerest apologizes concerning the manner in which we had to meet and allow me to assure you that it is in no way my intention to usurp your power over the block. You may keep your Kapo’s duties and I shall obey you as one of your orchestra members and your charge. The only thing I will ask of you is to allow me to keep control of the musical activities. I don’t mean it as an insult to you or your band—”
“None taken,” the former Kapo interrupted her with a smile and grasped Alma’s hand. She spoke German very well, with a very slight Polish accent. “Sofia Czajkowska, political. It’s my pleasure to make your acquaintance as well. And you’re absolutely right concerning both the band and my conductor’s abilities. I have none, but Lagerführerin Mandl has taken it into her head that I’m related to the Russian composer Tchaikovsky—I’m not—and apparently, it was enough for her to put me in charge. I can play a few tunes on the guitar well enough, but none of that sophisticated stuff that you just produced. So, by all means, take over the orchestra and don’t spare us. We all have one goal and one goal only—to come out of here alive at one point or another, and it would be utterly idiotic of me, or anyone else for that matter, to stand in your way. It’s obvious that out of us all you have the most experience—do what you must, Frau Rosé, just keep us alive.”
“Please, call me Alma.”
“I will. But it’s better if they don’t.” A discreet nod toward the orchestra. “It’ll give you more authority.” Turning toward her former charges, Sofia began speaking Polish, apparently, translating whatever had just transpired between the two women to the girls who didn’t speak German.
The dissatisfied grumbles subsided. One by one, the band girls began nodding enthusiastically to her words. Soon, a few of them were even smiling at Alma, to which she breathed out with relief. The transition of power had been as smooth as one could have only hoped.
“It was very smart of you.” Spitzer from the Schreibstube approached Alma a few minutes later. “If you tried taking charge without asking Sofia first, she could have made your life a living hell here, you take it from me.”
“I’m not interested in any positions of power,” Alma explained calmly. “I’m only here to ensure that we all come out of here alive. That’s all that matters to me.”
“I can tell.” For a few moments, the young girl with those sly black eyes appeared to be considering something; then, suddenly, thrust out her hand and announced her name, a different one from that offered by Mandl. “I’m Zippy. Zipporah, actually, but that’s what the local underground knows me as. I don’t have to tell you that I must remain Helen Spitzer from the Schreibstube for everyone else.”
“Of course.” Alma took her narrow palm in hers and pressed it with great emotion, touched to the marrow with such an unexpected expression of trust.
She had heard Magda speak of the camp resistance with a measure of reverence and fascination. She had also been warned to stay as far away from them as possible, if she knew what was good for her, for those underground types ended up on the camp gallows with frightening regularity. Smuggling, clandestine radios, handwritten leaflets, minor-scale workplace sabotage—in Magda’s eyes, their resistance activities were relatively harmless, but, apparently, the SS saw things differently. For some reason, Alma thought the underground types were all men—perhaps, former Red Army soldiers with at least some formal training in combat, or French militants shipped to Auschwitz by the Gestapo for their Resistance activities. Certainly not orchestra mandolinists with shrewd eyes and the white, fragile hands of an archetypical musician.
“So, it was you who got me my new violin?” She was studying Zippy with new-found respect.
“Is it any good?” Zippy bared her beautiful teeth in a grin. “It must be good, if you extracted such music out of it just now.”
“To be truthful, I did it out of spite.”
“I figured.” Zippy dropped a mischievous wink. “I like you. You’ll do just fine here, take my word for it.” Before long, she was back in her chair, her mandolin at the ready. “Frau Conductor, command. We’re ready.”
Chapter 4
The SS concert that evening was a great success, even though Alma pulled it off almost entirely on her own shoulders, letting the girls accompany her only in certain places that all of them could manage. Her back wet with sweat, Alma patiently waited for the camp leader to finish accepting congratulations from her colleagues on such a brilliant addition to her orchestra. Back home, in Vienna, she would have already downed her obligatory glass of water that would have awaited her backstage before rushing back to her audience. But this was Birkenau for you. Thirsty and annoyed, Alma looked on as the SS exchanged pleasantries at her expense, congratulating themselves on her talent.
Afterwards, instead of a moldy sausage and a piece of stale bread, the orchestra received an actual meal—potatoes with sauerkraut and even some meat—from the very grateful camp leader. Upon Alma, her new favorite pet Jew, Mandl bestowed an additional favor the very next day: a personal pass signed by Lagerführerin herself and a permission to go to the Kanada.
“Take whatever you like,” Mandl declared generously when Alma inquired politely what it was precisely that she was permitted to take. “Show the Rottenführer in charge your Ausweis when you get there and give him my personal oral orders to provide you with whatever you need. And do not lose your pass. Only very few privileged inmates have those, so make sure you keep it on your person at all times whenever you go outside women’s camp territory. My colleagues sometimes get overly enthusiastic in their duties and may very well shoot you if they find you wandering around without an Ausweis.”
It was an odd and frightening experience, walking through the camp alone. Well-trodden paths, a maze of barbed wire, guard towers, endless rows of barracks and shouts—Halt!—coming from above, menacing and invisible, whenever Alma stepped in the wrong direction. Rigid with fear, she held her arms up high with the Ausweis in it, screaming at the black muzzles of machine guns directed at her.
“Please, don’t shoot! I have a pass!”
“It’s a restricted zone!”
“Lagerführerin Mandl sent me to the Kanada detail.”
“Does it look like the Kanada to you?”
“I don’t know where it is… Could you perhaps kindly point me in the right direction?”
The muzzle of the gun swung to the left grudgingly. “Along that road, through the men’s camp, to the left of the medical barracks.”
“Many thanks,” she replied, backing away, half-expecting a burst of the machine-gun fire.
“Watch where you’re going! Another step and you’ll fry yourself on the electric fence. Feebleminded cow!”
By the time she had reached the men’s camp, Alma’s back was entirely wet with sweat. The sun was rolling westward, but the air was dull with ash. Foul-smelling clouds of it dimmed the dusky sky and turned it into the premature twili
ght. It snowed in great greasy flakes all around her; the remnants of the annihilated humanity landing softly on her exposed skin.
Alma wiped her hand down her arm, but the ash only smeared. Her palm was now a dusty dull-gray. It was in her eyelashes, impossible to blink away, in her nose; she opened her mouth to take a deep breath and tasted it on her tongue.
Tearing her kerchief off her head, she turned it inside out and cleaned her tongue, her face, her eyes, her bare arms. Such was her terror and disgust that it had dulled her other senses to such an extent that another enraged SS shout—“Out of the way!”—had scarcely registered with her. Only when the guard had physically installed himself in front of her, eyes wild with rage, hand raised with a whip in it, did Alma leap back guided by sheer instinct.
“I have an Ausweis—”
“Stay out of the way! The men are marching!”
Just now did she see them, led by a Kapo, five abreast, a ghostly army of gray skeletons returning from their daily labors.
The outside gangs.
It was a grotesque parade; Dante’s Inferno, the ninth circle of hell. They marched and marched, all shaved heads; scaly, weather-worn skin; emaciated frames; black, bare feet; torn rags on which the stripes had long disappeared under the layers of blood and dirt. Their eyes stared fixedly forward, dull and devoid of a single spark of hope. Their shoulders were stooped like those of the ancient men, yet they couldn’t have been older than forty.
Caps pressed against their seams, they marched past the SS man, who towered over them like some ancient cruel deity. From time to time, he amused himself with slashing their sweat-smeared cheeks with his whip. They barely flinched, having long lost the ability to feel the pain. They marched on, the tormented, accusing apparitions, reduced to nothing, the former lawyers, civil servants, prominent physicians, university professors, set decorators, bank clerks. It appeared almost unconceivable now, the very idea that they used to be anything but this faceless slave force.
The Violinist of Auschwitz: Based on a true story, an absolutely heartbreaking and gripping World War 2 novel Page 4